5 Cost-Effective Alternatives to Zendesk

By
PC Mag ME TeamApril 1, 2016, 2 p.m.

These five online help desks might make more business and financial sense for your organization than Zendesk.

Zendesk is one of the best-known and most-used help desk platforms on the market. It's got start-up cachet; a clean, modern user interface (UI), and flashy features such as predictive analytics. Fortunately for you, there are several comparable help desk options available with more affordable (or even free) plans packing just as much—if not more—functionality.

Zendesk offers four pricing tiers, starting with the small business level and working up to enterprise. The Essentials plan is the cheapest plan (which costs $5 per agent per month, or if billed annually, costs $9 per agent month-to-month). But that only gives you email and social channels, a basic knowledge base, a web widget, a mobile software development kit (SDK), and agent macros to create automated responses. It's a simple and affordable solution for a very small business that doesn't have a problem interacting with customers solely through email and social media, but it doesn't give you much in the way of higher-level features.

The Team plan (which costs $19 per agent per month, or if billed annually, costs $25 per agent month-to-month) is more realistic for small to midsize businesses (SMBs). This tier adds a branded help desk and customer portal along with business rules and performance dashboards to automate and track the effectiveness of your agents in resolving tickets. With the Professional plan (which costs $49 per agent per month), you begin to see enterprise functionality such as community forums, deeper analytics, and custom private applications. Finally, the Enterprise plan (which costs $99 per agent per month) is the tier that adds features such as custom agent roles, auditing and admin controls, and multi-brand support for businesses managing help desks for numerous products.

If your heart is set on Zendesk, you'll find the help desk capabilities your business needs in one of these tiers. But good cloud-based help desk software comes cheap nowadays. In fact, one of the five following options may be more affordable and better suited to your unique business needs.

1. HappyFox

HappyFox is one of our Editors' Choices for help desk services, and what you get for its price was a big factor in that nod. HappyFox begins at $19 per staff (an agent or support staff member) per month (billed annually), matching Zendesk's Team plan on price but offering functionality on par with its Professional tier. In the Popular plan, you get access to the internal and self-service knowledge base, community forums, automated macro responses, agent collision, onboarding support, and reporting features such as dashboards, ticket filters, and custom fields and reports. There are also $59 and $79 per staff, per month tiers for larger businesses and enterprises managing 5-10 brands—more bang for your buck than the Zendesk enterprise plan.

But the most value comes with the Mighty plan. Priced at $29 per staff per month (billed annually), this plan is more flexible for those businesses in the meat of the SMB curve. It allows you to manage up to three different brands with unlimited ticket categories, expanded security mechanisms such as single sign-on (SSO), a longer list of third-party integrations, and both live chat and phone support during business hours. You also get deeper reporting features. Zendesk's voice and live chat services are sold as add-ons to the main help desk platform so, with HappyFox, your business can pay less for more built-in features.

From a cost standpoint, you can't do better than free. Spiceworks offers its cloud-based IT help desk for free, with no IT admin, user, or ticket limits. There are no charges for hosting, storage, or support, either. The platform includes all of the basics an SMB might need: a knowledge base, automatic ticket assignment, adds-on apps, and even Active Directory (AD) integration.

But, as it's a free service, the UI and features are also bare-bones. Spiceworks' help desk is a great option for businesses just starting out with an online help desk solution that don't see the need to pay for basic needs. You don't get any of the deeper automation, customizability, or reporting you'll find in Zendesk or other paid offerings, though.

3. Freshdesk

Freshdesk already got the edge over Zendesk for overall help desk capability, but its pricing structure is a particular area in which Freshdesk holds the advantage. Freshdesk's Blossom tier costs $16 per agent per month, and offers social support channels, community forums, and a gaming mechanic. The Garden tier (which costs $25 per agent per month) adds live chat, and multiple products and locations.

The $40 Estate tier and the $70 Forest tier add customization and enterprise reporting (and more), but the platform offers 24/7 email support and knowledge base access at no extra cost to all tiers. Zendesk starts out cheaper, but Freshdesk's pricing is markedly lower as your business scales up for the same level of functionality. Freshdesk also includes live chat with every tier except for its cheapest one, so you're not paying the add-on price for a core help desk feature you know your agents will need.

4. Revelation

Revelation is another good help desk option if you're looking for a cheaper Zendesk alternative. Revelation's strength is in its breadth of ticket form options for different customer issues, and parent company Yellowfish Software recently addressed the biggest knock our review had against it by lowering its prices.

Revelation has a solid free tier for up to three agents that includes its core ticket-tracking functionality, adding online and email support for $19 per license per month (billed annually) plus phone support at the $39 Prime tier. Its Gameplan tier adds real-time project tracking and project management-focused visual reporting for $59 per license per month. Overall, Zendesk gives you far more help desk features with which to work but Relevation is a good option for basic help desk capabilities specifically geared toward project management (at the higher tiers). There's also a 10 percent discount for nonprofit, education, and government organizations so Revelation is an even more appealing option if your business falls into those categories.

5. Cayzu

Cayzu is an affordable and capable help desk alternative to Zendesk that's especially good at handling multiple brands without charging enterprise prices. Cayzu offers a free tier that is similar to Revelation's free tier; this tier is good for small teams of up to three users that need nothing more than ticket management, email ticketing, automated quick responses, and a 24/7 self-service customer knowledge base.

The $12 per month Pro plan and $17 per month Plus plan (both billed annually) add to the feature list substantially without any additional limits on number of agents. That's $12 or $17 per month for your entire organization, not for each user. The Pro tier adds features including time tracking, custom fields, rebranding and portal customization, and custom avatars. The Plus tier adds support for multiple brands and products—a feature you only get at Zendesk's $99 per agent per month Enterprise tier (and one that you won't find in another service for cheaper than $40 or $50 per agent per month).

Cayzu is a slightly lower-rated help desk solution than HappyFox or Zendesk but, without the per-agent fees that can up your monthly cost by double, triple or even quadruple, the value in Cayzu's $17-per-month Plus plan is tough to beat.